America, the beautiful,
America, the rebellious,
America, the Melting Pot!

BKO Chamber Music is playing it (Uel Wade on piano, Mitsuko Suzuki on violin, Robert Reed on cello).

The composers are all-American, all 20thcentury. They all rebelled against the European way of doing things, against the “progressive” academic dictum that music had to move beyond tonality, whether audiences like it or not.

BKO will feature ”serious” composers who are unafraid of blues, jazz, ragtime, stride piano, Dixieland, boogie-woogie, patriotic anthem, Appalachian folk, Jewish lament, gospel, funk, and African dance–composers who make use of all that good melting-pot stuff. (Some of them you know, like Samuel Barber. Some you may not, like Daron Hagen.)